of permanent secession.  The American Revolution is not a parallel case.  The only parallel in history that we can now recall is the one we have used so freely in this article.  It is one in which the parallel fails chiefly in presenting stronger grounds for a permanent disruption.  Scotland struggled against a geographical necessity.  She did so under the influence of far more powerful motives than now exist at the South.  She had far less binding ties than now are still living between us and our revolted States.  A geographical necessity as vast and potent now links the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes.  The struggle is a more gigantic one, and in its fierce convulsions men’s minds may well lose their present balance, and men’s hearts their calm courage.

But everlasting laws are not to be put aside.  The tornadoes which sweep the tropic seas seem for a time to reverse the course of Nature.  The waters become turbid with the sands of the ocean’s bed.  The air strikes and smites down with a solid force.  The heaviest stones and beams of massy buildings fly like feathers on the blast.  Vessels are found far up on the land, with the torn stumps of trees driven through their planking.  Life and property are buried in utter ruin.  But the storm passes, the sunshine comes back into the darkened skies, and the blue waves sparkle within their ancient limits.  The awful tempest passes away into history,—­for it is God, and not man, who measures the waters in the hollow of His hand, and sends forth and restrains the breath of the blasting of His displeasure.

* * * * *

PANIC TERROR.

In those long-gone days when the gods of Olympus were in all their glory, and when those gods were in the habit of disturbing the domestic peace of worthy men, there was born unto an Arcadian nymph a son, for whom no proper father could be found.  The father was Mercury, who was a Dieu a bonnes fortunes, and he did not, like some Christian gentlemen in similar circumstances, altogether neglect his boy; for (so goes the story) the child was “such a fright” that his mother was shocked and his nurse ran away (Richard III. did not make a worse first appearance); whereupon Mercury seized him, and bore him to Olympus, where he showed him, with paternal partiality, to all the gods, who were so pleased with the little monster that they named him Pan, as evidence that they were All delighted with his charming ugliness,—­they being, it should seem, as fond of hideous pets as if they had been mere mortals, and endowed with a liberal share of humanity’s bad taste.  There are other accounts of the birth of Pan, one of which is, that he was the child of Penelope, born while she was waiting for the return of the crafty Ulysses, and that his fathers were all the aspirants to her favor,—­a piece of scandal to be rejected, as reflecting very severely upon the